Friday, August 21, 2009

One Tree is Nice

One Tree is Nice is a children’s book by Janice May Udry. In the HarperCollins webpage on the book, the author explains that trees are very nice, but even one tree is nice if it is the only one you happen to have.

The page goes on to say that Ms. Udry is also the author of Thump and Plunk.

I kept wondering why the umpires didn’t throw them both out of the game…But I digress.

If, as this author asserts, one tree is nice, are two trees twice as nice and three trees thrice as nice? (Thay that five times fast.)

And while we’re on the subject, how many trees does it take to make a forest? Hundreds? A thousand? What about FIVE thousand?

Can it still be called a forest if there are buildings there? What about roads? Sure. Our National Forests have both things in them. The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) was built in the midst of a redwood forest. It’s got both buildings and roads in it, too. (By the way, the team mascot for UCSC, is an inhabitant of said forest – the Banana Slug.)

UIC has a few trees on its campus too. A few hundred maybe? Actually, according to the most recent count, there are 5,021 (!) trees on campus (3,224 on the East Side and 1,797 on the West Side). More than 20% of them are Honeylocust, but over 80 different varieties are represented.

Others might find it surprising to discover there are six Tree of Heaven trees here at UIC. Not I. (Take that, you Banana Slugs!)

Five thousand trees on this campus!! This place is already greener than we often give it credit for. Perhaps we can’t see our forest for the trees.

Perhaps even with five thousand trees, we need more which retain their green year round. This is one of the ideas being considered by the Master Plan consultants.

See? Trees and Flames can coexist quite nicely, even at a big city campus like UIC.